The United States on Friday expressed concern about a rise in sexual violence and gang rapes in Egypt and condemned local politicians who have said the women are to blame.

The response came after a string of reports by Agence France Presse and other media outlets about women who are speaking out about rape and other sexual attacks inflicted by groups of men at demonstrations in the wake of the 2011 uprising.

Clashes broke out on Friday in Cairo and Egypt's second city Alexandria between opponents and supporters of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, injuring 10 people, the official MENA news agency said.

The bloodiest clashes were in Alexandria where nine people were hurt and hospitalized after fighting broke out in the coastal city's Sidi Gaber district near offices of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group, MENA said, quoting health ministry official Khaled al-Khatib.

Egypt is being plagued by repeated power cuts because it does not have money to buy enough fuel, the oil ministry said on Thursday.

Rolling power cuts in the country of 83 million people are due to "the electricity sector's failure to secure needed funds for buying liquefied fuel for some power stations," the state's MENA news agency quoted a ministry official as saying.

The Egyptian military has arrested three scuba divers accused of cutting an undersea Internet cable off the coast of the northern city of Alexandria, it said on Thursday.

The three had been spotted on board a small boat and attempted to flee ashore, but the navy gave chase and eventually caught up and arrested them, the military said on its Facebook page.

A prominent Egyptian dissident against the ruling Islamists will stand trial for allegedly participating in a May attack on a presidential candidate's headquarters, he told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Alaa Abdel Fattah, who was jailed during the previous regime of the Hosni Mubarak, said he had received a letter telling him he and 12 others, were to go on trial.

An Egyptian court on Wednesday overturned a decision by President Mohammed Morsi to sack prosecutor general Abdel Meguid Mahmoud and ordered his reinstatement, state media reported.

The ruling by the appeals court will once again put the presidency on a collision course with the judiciary, while any enforcement of its terms remains trapped in a legal labyrinth.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi expects parliamentary elections to be held in October, the official MENA news agency said Wednesday, after the vote was delayed by legal and political challenges.

Morsi, speaking to the Egyptian community in Doha where he attended an Arab summit, said he "expected parliamentary elections would be held in October and that parliament would be in session before the year's end," MENA said.

A pro-democracy activist and opponent of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood turned himself in to the prosecutor's office for questioning on Tuesday, a day after an order for his arrest.

Alaa Abdel Fattah was "temporarily released" a few hours later, a judicial source said.

An Israeli man and a Norwegian woman kidnapped by armed Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt's Sinai peninsula four days ago were set free on Tuesday, state news agency MENA said.

The pair had been traveling between the resort of Taba and coastal town of Dahab when they were abducted Friday. They were freed thanks to the "efforts" of Bedouin tribesmen, MENA said, citing the security services.

A Muslim man was sentenced to death on Monday after having been found guilty of killing two Coptic Christians in southern Egypt in 2011, court sources said.

The court in Sohag, 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Cairo, convicted Mahmud Abdel Nazir, 50, of having killed two Copts, wounded three others and started a fire to avenge what he called the murder of his brother by a Copt.